870 tactical break in period

[2628462]

after cleaning brand new 870 tactical, went to range & put 40 rifled Rem. slugs through it. 3 times I had to forcibly struggle to get spent casing out of barrel. Is this common for a new 870?

[Chief Brody]

For slugs, no that isn't common. Normally, when someone has a complaint like that it's from shooting low-brass Winchester crap from Walmart or Dick's. Make sure the gun is lubed properly, and if you really want to you can take the barrel off and polish the chamber. Short of that, continue to shoot the snot out of the gun and make sure you're not short-shucking. Rail on the thing as hard as you please and it should work great.

Welcome to the forum, by the way-
Steve

[2628462]

thanks. I will polish chamber. picked up some loc-tite as I noticed the screw on barrel band, 3 screws on rear site and front dovetail site where all loose after range session.

[Synchronizor]

after cleaning brand new 870 tactical, went to range & put 40 rifled Rem. slugs through it. 3 times I had to forcibly struggle to get spent casing out of barrel. Is this common for a new 870?

I don't consider that too unexpected, personally. Chief Brody is correct that many of the sticky extraction problems folks report are with low-quality steel-cup target loads such as the Winchester Universals, but it can certainly happen with other shells as well. One thing to keep in mind is that even if a shell cup is brass-colored, it's most likely still made of steel these days, and steel just doesn't expand & contract as nicely as brass does. Check your slug shells with a magnet; unless you got them out of your grandpa's attic, there's a good chance the magnet will stick. Premium ammo usually uses stronger steel cups & better basewads than dirt-cheap target loads, but this isn't always the case. I'll point out that hull quality is in no way tied to the height of the cup; low- vs. high-brass has long since ceased to mean anything, and some of the best hulls on the market today - such as the Remington STS unibodies - actually have very low cups. On top of that, full-power buckshot and slug loads tend to run at higher pressures than cheap target ammo, so even if a steel cup is a little stronger, it still may very well stick.

It really isn't unusual for brand-new 870s (all models, not just Expresses) to have extraction problems with steel-cup shells at first. The first step (and a commonly skipped one) is to make sure the chamber is completely clean of the protective grease, warehouse dust, and other crud it usually sports out of the box. It sounds like you've already done that, but I'd double-check. Once it's clean, wrapping some fine steel wool around a bore brush and chucking it into a drill can help with the initial smoothing-down of rough spots in the chamber. But the thing you really need to do is just buy a case of inexpensive shells (basic Federal or Remington target loads are generally pretty good values for break-in, practice, and plinking), and shoot the snot out of your shotgun. If you get a stuck shell, yank it out and keep going. You won't break an 870 by running it hard, and the use will let the parts wear in and make the gun run better. No 870 is at its best out of the box; not a $250 Express, not a $2500 NightHawk custom.

[2628462]

Thanks for your input, appreciated.